WAR · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Low Rider

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 5-9, 11-21 and 23-38, and 8 more places -- 89% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
141 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
112
LENGTH
3:11
DIFFICULTY
54/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 141 BPM
LOW RIDER · BAR 6

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 49 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 54 out of 100, so the beat is most of what the song asks for. Get it clean and the rest follows.

How to get it under your hands

The room opens this beat on its simplest reduction, at 106 BPM, and adds the notes back a rung at a time -- 3 of them. Nothing is a matter of opinion: each rung has a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next one.

  1. Skeleton. Only the notes that land on a beat. The point is to feel where this bar stands.
  2. Kick and snare, whole. The feet and the snare exactly as written, hi-hat pulled back to quarter notes. This is the part to know by heart.
  3. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 106, 123 and 141 BPM, and the gate at each one is 8 loops in a row with no wrong note and no wobble in the time.

PRACTISE THIS BEAT →

Questions

What drum beat does Low Rider use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 141 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 89% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 5-9, 11-21, 23-38 and 40-42, and 7 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 1 time over the song.

Is the beat in Low Rider hard?

49 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 54 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 112 BARS ANALYSED